venezia blog

Monday, March 19, 2018

Painted in 1560, Titian's Sapienza (or Wisdom) was situated on the ceiling of the antechamber some 30 years before it became the Statuario Pubblico discussed in my last post, when the room still served as a classroom for the study of rhetoric, philosophy and ancient Greek.

Saturday, March 17, 2018

A 16th-century bust of a sober man in the classical style is haunted by a Hellenistic sculpture of the dionysian figure Silenius from the 3rd century BCE

The National Archeological Museum is part of the Museo Correr (though it hasn't always been: I remember it having its own entrance and ticket when I first visited in 1991). The core of the collection dates back to the 16th century, and to what was originally the private collection of two Grimanis: Cardinal Domenico Grimani, patriarch of Aquilea in the first half of the century, and Giovanni, who in 1587 donated the whole thing to the Venetian Republic in the interest of insuring that its citizens would forever have the “memoria delle cose antiche.”

By 1596 the collection was installed in the very room where the images of this post were taken: in the grand antechamber of the even grander Biblioteca Marciana. It was one of the first public museums in history, and though there is no record of exactly how the works were initially displayed, in the 1730s Anton Maria Zanetti il Giovane made a very detailed and illustrated inventory of the collection as it existed at that time--with a very precise illustration of the works' arrangement in the antechamber.

After the fall of the Republic in 1797, the collection was moved more than once from its original location. But in the 20th century it was returned to its original home in the antechamber and, having grown through other significant donations, was expanded into rooms of the Procuratie Nuove, which it still occupies.

All of it is worth a long look. But on the day I took these images I mostly limited myself to the antechamber which, with the exception of a very few sculptures now displayed in the rooms of the Porcuratie Nuove, appears just as it did in Zanetti's illustrations of the space from over 250 years ago.

I imagine some might say that the identification of these works is not quite up to contemporary museum standards. Though each work is in fact identified, they aren't arranged according to any obvious categories such as historical period.

But it's precisely the absence of the contemporary categories to which we're accustomed that makes the experience of looking around this antechamber so interesting. All around you are the kinds of classical works from which the Renaissance took its inspiration and ideas; all around you is the literal embodiment of a certain period's ideas about what could or should be done with antiquity, how it should be thought about and looked at and arranged, how it could be used (or, as Nietzsche pointed out, abused). And though we can draw a line from the 18th century notions of history and scholarship on display in this room to those of our own time, it may not be as straight or as simple a line as we are prone to imagine it. It may not be a single line at all. It may split off into any number of directions. It may dead end.

In this room I'm struck, as I so often am in Venice, by juxtapositions--and the imaginative (and perhaps idiosyncratic and useless) play that they can inspire.

Of course, as one's visit to the Correr usually starts all the way at the distant other end of the Procuratie Nuove, by the time you make your way through everything else there is to see in the museum to the Biblioteca Marciana you may be too mentally exhausted to take in much of anything else. I find that I often am. And for this reason I suspect a fair number of visitors may not even make it all the way to the grand room of the Biblioteca, one of the city's exemplary spaces, with its paintings by Tintoretto, Veronese, et al.

For this reason, there may be something to be said for walking the whole length of the Procuratie Nuove to start your visit with the Biblioteca Marciana. Especially if you're visiting in the morning or noon hours, when the marbles in particular benefit from the fugitive sunlight coming through the windows.

And when you're done admiring the sculptures in the antechamber of the Biblioteca Marciana, don't neglect to look up above you at Titian's painting Sapienza, which really deserves a post all its own--the next one.

A Greek statue of Demeter from the end of the 5th century BCE stands before a Roman grotesque

A large Roman candelabrum base from the last quarter of the 1st century CE

This ancient Greek head from one of the rooms in the Procuratie Nuove seems best seen in sunlight

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

As entertaining as something like Carnevale may be for visitors, I think the life of a city is more truly found in the everyday rather than in spectacle. Indeed, Carnevale has become so completely divorced from the actual resident life of the city that Venice's non-resident mayor bumbled into a rare moment of lucidity when he recently suggested that the most popular spectacles of Carnevale--eg, the Flight of the Angel from the campanile of San Marco--be moved to sites on the mainland better able to host the huge crowds. For what at first sounds like just another one of his moronic (and usually self-interested) suggestions, turns out to aptly depict the degree to which Carnevale has become so largely an alien presence (some would say, alien nuisance) to resident life here that it might as well be held anywhere else. Any living cultural ties that bind it specifically to this city are gone (at least for most Venetians over the age of 8 or so.)

And yet, in spite of those ruling interests which seem only too happy to wipe out all of resident life in order to better host spectacle, daily life here subsists--and it still tends to involve boats. As in the image above of a boatload of books.

Or the one below: which shows how we moved our bed last year from our old apartment to our new one.

Thursday, March 8, 2018

Last Sunday, on a cold foggy afternoon, I found myself for the first time in Palazzo Zenobio, which is also known as the Collegio Armeno Moorat Raphael, as it's been the property of the Padri Armeni Mechitaristi di Venezia since 1850, and remainsa center for Armenian studies. It was open to the public last Sunday day because it's currently hosting a large exhibition of contemporary painting, about which I think it best for me to politely refrain from commenting. It wasn't to my taste, but I encourage anyone in town to check it out and form their own opinion.

What struck me, though, was not the exhibition, and not only the notable late Baroque decoration of the palazzo, but the cold. The entire place was unheated--so that my ungloved hands quickly became stiff and numb--and the experience of walking among its many icy rooms reminded me that not all that long ago (at least in terms of the long history of Venice) it was not uncommon for even the grandest Venetian palaces to be without heating. After more than 7 years of living in Venice I recognized that I was finally experiencing first-hand and on a grand scale what I'd only previously read about, most memorably in William Dean Howell's marvelous account of living in Venice in the 1860s entitled Venetian Life.

Now that the end of winter is in view perhaps it's a good time to post a large excerpt from Howell's description of unheated palazzi and how, more generally, 19th-century Venetians made it (or suffered through) the season. On a sunny day like today in Venice, after a rather long stretch of wet gray weather (including a window-rattling run of bora winds from the northeast), it's finally possible to read the passage below without an uncomfortable shiver of sympathy.

The Germans have introduced stoves at Venice, but they are not in much
favor with the Italians, who think their heat unwholesome, and endure a
degree of cold, in their wish to dispense with fire, which we of the
winter-lands know nothing of in our houses. They pay for their absurd
prejudice with terrible chilblains; and their hands, which suffer equally
with their feet, are, in the case of those most exposed to the cold,
objects pitiable and revolting to behold when the itching and the effort
to allay it has turned them into bloated masses of sores. It is not a
pleasant thing to speak of; and the constant sight of the affliction among
people who bring you bread, cut you cheese, and weigh you out sugar, by no
means reconciles the Northern stomach to its prevalence. I have observed
that priests, and those who have much to do in the frigid churches, are
the worst sufferers in this way; and I think no one can help noting in the
harsh, raw winter-complexion (for in summer the tone is quite different)
of the women of all classes, the protest of systems cruelly starved of the
warmth which health demands.

The houses are, naturally enough in this climate, where there are eight
months of summer in the year, all built with a view to coolness in summer,
and the rooms which are not upon the ground-floor are very large, lofty,
and cold. In the palaces, indeed, there are two suites of apartments—the
smaller and cozier suite upon the first floor for the winter, and the
grander and airier chambers and saloons above, for defence against the
insidious heats of the sirocco. But, for the most part, people must occupy
the same room summer and winter, the sole change being in the strip of
carpet laid meagrely before the sofa during the latter season. In the
comparatively few houses where carpets are the rule and not the exception,
they are always removed during the summer—for the triple purpose of
sparing them some months’ wear, banishing fleas and other domestic
insects, and showing off the beauty of the oiled and shining pavement,
which in the meanest houses is tasteful, and in many of the better sort is
often in-wrought with figures and designs of mosaic work.

All the floors in Venice are of stone, and [...] all the floors are death-cold in winter. People sit with
their feet upon cushions, and their bodies muffled in furs and wadded
gowns. When one goes out into the sun, one often finds an overcoat too
heavy, but it never gives warmth enough in the house, where the Venetian
sometimes wears it. Indeed, the sun is recognized by Venetians as the only
legitimate source of heat, and they sell his favor at fabulous prices to
such foreigners as take the lodgings into which he shines.

It is those who remain in-doors, therefore, who are exposed to the utmost
rigor of the winter, and people spend as much of their time as possible in
the open air. The Riva degli Schiavoni catches the warm afternoon sun in
its whole extent, and is then thronged with promenaders of every class,
condition, age, and sex; and whenever the sun shines in the Piazza,
shivering fashion eagerly courts its favor. At night men crowd the close
little caffè, where they reciprocate smoke, respiration, and animal heat,
and thus temper the inclemency of the weather, and beguile the time with
solemn loafing, [Footnote: I permit myself, throughout this book, the use
of the expressive American words loaf and loafer, as the
only terms adequate to the description of professional idling in Venice]
and the perusal of dingy little journals, drinking small cups of black
coffee, and playing long games of chess,—an evening that seemed to
me as torpid and lifeless as a Lap’s, and intolerable when I remembered
the bright, social winter evenings of another and happier land and
civilization.

Sometimes you find a heated stove—that is to say, one in which there
has been a fire during the day—in a Venetian house; but the stove
seems usually to be placed in the room for ornament, or else to be engaged
only in diffusing a very acrid smoke,—as if the Venetian preferred
to take warmth, as other people do snuff, by inhalation. The stove itself
is a curious structure, and built commonly of bricks and plastering,—whitewashed
and painted outside. It is a great consumer of fuel, and radiates but
little heat. By dint of constant wooding I contrived to warm mine; but my
Italian friends always avoided its vicinity when they came to see me, and
most amusingly regarded my determination to be comfortable as part of the
eccentricity inseparable from the Anglo-Saxon character.

I daresay they would not trifle with winter, thus, if they knew him in his
northern moods. But the only voluntary concession they make to his
severity is the scaldino, and this is made chiefly by the yielding
sex, who are denied the warmth of the caffè. The use of the scaldino is
known to all ranks, but it is the women of the poorer orders who are most
addicted to it. The scaldino is a small pot of glazed earthen-ware, having
an earthen bale: and with this handle passed over the arm, and the pot
full of bristling charcoal, the Veneziana’s defense against cold is
complete. She carries her scaldino with her in the house from room to
room, and takes it with her into the street; and it has often been my
fortune in the churches to divide my admiration between the painting over
the altar and the poor old crone kneeling before it, who, while she
sniffed and whispered a gelid prayer, and warmed her heart with religion,
baked her dirty palms in the carbonic fumes of the scaldino. In one of the
public bathhouses in Venice there are four prints upon the walls, intended
to convey to the minds of the bathers a poetical idea of the four seasons.
There is nothing remarkable in the symbolization of Spring, Summer, and
Autumn; but Winter is nationally represented by a fine lady dressed in
furred robes, with her feet upon a cushioned foot-stool, and a scaldino in
her lap! When we talk of being invaded in the north, we poetize the idea
of defense by the figure of defending our hearthstones. Alas! could
we fight for our sacred scaldini?

It's one of the best books from any period that I've read on Venice, and I can't imagine another 19th-century book in English that even comes close to giving such a full and entertaining account of Venetian life.

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About Me

In November 2010 my wife, our 3-year-old son, and I moved from Brooklyn, NY to Venice, Italy. Born and raised in California, I'd lived in NYC since 1993--except for a 2 year period from 2007-09 when my wife and I lived in Asheville, NC, where our son was born. I have dual American-Italian citizenship and am equally divided between Sicilian blood on my mother's side and Genovese on my father's. I've published a novel with a major press, some journalism, and worked a variety of jobs.